Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to an after works launch party for the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500. I’ve reviewed ScanSnap devices before but the iX500 is a bit different. It’s the top of the range device that’s aimed at SME’s. What’s an SME? It’s a small/medium enterprise to you and me, basically a business that employs a few people but doesn’t have much need for specialists in internal admin. So for example, the finance bod is also often in charge of the IT and so on.
You may not know this and I certainly didn’t but Fujitsu are BIG in the world of scanning. How big? They sell a little over one in two of every scanner sold in the world. They completely dwarf the likes of Canon and HP combined in fact. A lot of this market share comes from the high end professional scanning devices they make that huge organisations have to scan hundreds of thousands of documents. And that technological nous filters down in the home sector, just like F1 technology filters down into road cars.
Scanners have come a long way since the hot, beige, parallel port connected A4 flatbed scanner my dad bought in the late 90’s. The ScanSnap iX500 comes in a choice of colours (any colour you like as long as it’s black) with a comforting blue light on the front. It might as well have Don’t Panic embossed on it because it really makes the whole process very simple.
How simple? Watch the video below to see how long it takes from unboxing to scanning (I’ve edited out part of the software installation due to passwords etc).
Basically after installing the software on your PC/Mac/Smartphone, all that you need to do is hit that big friendly blue button and select from some on screen prompts. You can scan to Excel, Word, Dropbox, Google Docs/Drive, at the touch of a button. It does duplex, colour and even business cards (and it’ll put them in a database for you). You can read all the technical details about the ScanSnap iX500 on the Fujitsu website.
This is a step up from the ScanSnap S1300 in every imaginable way. RRP is £398 ex VAT and if your office has got the need for a dedicated scanner and are on a budget, you wont find better